Thread: Parsing text files.

Doing my best to understand what you mean . . .

In other words, you are creating a list of names, let's say, "names.txt", that contains something much like:

Code:

Allen
Brian
Crystal
David
Ellen

If someone enters the name "Brian", then your program will print "The name 'Brian' is in the list of names." -- whereas, if they enter "Varun", then the program will print "The name 'Varun' is not in the list of names."?

If so, then you will need to use ifstream. One example of a program that reads in words, then prints them out to the screen on their own lines could be:

Code:

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
#include <cstdlib>

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    if(argc != 2) {
        std::cout << "usage: " << argv[0] << " filename" << std::endl;
        exit(1); /* NOTE: I'm not sure, in C++, if exit() is actually std::exit() or not. Probably. */
    }
    std::ifstream file(argv[1]);
    if(!file.is_open()) exit(1);
    bool done = false;
    do {
        std::string word;
        file >> word;
        std::cout << word << std::endl;
        if(file.eof()) done = true;
    } while(!done);
    file.close();
    return 0;
}

In C++, it is possible to compare strings against each other (string1 == string2), since operator==(const std::string &) is implemented by default.

That should be enough to get you started, at least.